Posted
by
kdawson
on Tuesday December 16, 2008 @09:04AM
from the donkey-faithful-one-hundred-percent dept.

At 3:00 Eastern time on Monday Dec. 15, 538 electors in state capitols across the US cast the votes that actually elected Barack Obama the 44th President. Obama received, unofficially, 365 electoral votes (with 270 needed to win). The exact total will not be official — or Obama officially elected — until Congress certifies the count of electoral votes in a joint session on Jan. 6, 2009. The Electoral College was established in its present form in 1804 by the Twelfth Amendment to the US Constitution. Electors are not required to vote for the candidate who won their state — in fact, 24 states make it a criminal offense to vote otherwise, but no "faithless elector" has ever been charged with a crime. "On 158 occasions, electors have cast their votes for President or Vice President in a manner different from that prescribed by the legislature of the state they represented. Of those, 71 votes were changed because the original candidate died before the elector was able to cast a vote. Two votes were not cast at all when electors chose to abstain from casting their electoral vote for any candidate. The remaining 85 were changed by the elector's personal interest, or perhaps by accident. Usually, the faithless electors act alone. An exception was in 1836 when 23 Virginia electors changed their vote together. ... To date, faithless electors have never changed the otherwise expected outcome of the election."

Don't even think about it. The thought of miss Africa-is-too-a-country being anywhere near the line of succession gives me the willies. Fortunately, that's not going to happen. Her destiny is the same as that for all opinionated idiots who run past their 15 minutes — cable TV pundit.

But you know, it's not really correct to say that Obama got elected yesterday. The ballots were cast, but they don't get counted until January 5. And you know who the Constitution designates to count these ballots? The VP,

Except you weren't modded down. You were, as you knew perfectly well you would be, modded up. Because you couldn't just say what you had to say, you had to try to impress us with how tough and brave and individualistic you are, standing up speaking truth to power, whatever the risk.

Whatever. Next time try punching your statement up by leading with, "This may not be very politically correct of me, but..." Because that also shows what a tough, brave individualist you are, and it adds a little variety. A bold rebel in the battle for truth, that's you!

After all, (and I should be modded down for stating this lie), he hasn't actually completed a term in the last two offices he has held.

Fixed that for you. Obama served two and a half terms [wikipedia.org] in the Illinois state legislature before being elected to the U.S. Senate.

I would also like to know where all these conservative Concern Trolls were in 2000, when Al Gore (30 years public service) was running against George W. Bush, who's resume consisted of drinking, skipping out on his Air Guard commitments, driving companies into the ground, and serving for five years as the 5th most powerful politician in Texas (TX Constitution gives little power to the governor).

Lots was made about Sarah Palin being on the Republican ticket. In 1972, Roger MacBride--a faithless Republican elector from Virginia--decided that he could not in good conscience vote for Nixon. He cast his vote for John Hospers & Tonie Nathan on the Libertarian ticket, marking the first time a woman had ever received an electoral vote.

That's why I've never like the term "faithless" elector. The way the electoral college is supposed to work, is that we should know who our electors are, and they should be people we trust to make the best choice they can.

That's why I don't like that it's a crime to vote against your states popular vote, and that the winning party gets to choose the electors. I think it'd be a lot more interesting around here with a shadow council picking leaders.

Actually, the way the Electoral College was suppose to work was changed back after our fourth election for POTUS. Jefferson (the presidential candidate) and Burr (the *VICE* presidential candidate) both got the same number of electoral votes. This happened because the wisdom of our founding fathers dictated that each elector got TWO votes for president. The second place finisher was suppose to be vice president. This was the first campaign where the election of president was actually contested, and the results led to the creation of our first two party system with Federalists and Republicans (who later became known as the Democratic Republicans and even later as Democrats).

Since all of the Republican electors chose both Jefferson and Burr, they were tied in the Electoral College. Officially, Burr should have stepped aside and let Jefferson be president. However, Federalists convinced Burr not to drop out, and the vote went to the House where after 30 ballots, there was still no decision. Hamilton -- a Federalist -- convinced Federalist House members that not respecting the outcome of the election was probably more damaging to the Republic than allowing an "atheist" like Jefferson as President.

The whole Electoral College system came about because we didn't have universal suffrage in this country. In Virginia, the most populous state, only White males with the largest land holdings could vote while in Pennsylvania, almost all freemen were allowed to vote. Allowing a direct vote for President would mean that smaller Pennsylvania would have two to three times the voting power of Virginia.

The Constitutional Convention tried to come up with tax and landholding requirements for voting, but failed. Plus, there was disagreement about how slaves should affect a state's voting power for the office. The Electoral College was a punt. The Constitution didn't even bother to specify how electors would be chosen.

They did give each elector the ability to have two votes for President, so they could choose one local guy and one guy who wasn't a resident of that state. This was done because when you only have a very small select group of men voting, their was fear that there would be a lot of political hanky-panky and vote trading. Allowing the electors an outlet to cast a spurious vote for a local political bigwig was a way of venting this political horse trading. After all, what was the worse that could happen?

In the first three elections, all electors were chosen by the voters, and the electors were chosen by districts. This was how the election was envisioned to happen by our founding fathers. However, when Adams ran against Jefferson, states started mucking up the rules. In New York, the way electors were chosen was changed from election (which would allow the Republicans to get some electors) to having the legislature choose them (to guarantee all electors would be Federalists). When the Federalists lost the legislature, the outgoing legislature changed the rules to allow the Governor to choose them instead of the Republican dominated incoming legislature.

Election shenanigans wasn't a Federalist monopoly. Almost all states changed the way electors were chosen in order to satisfy the dominant political party. It was the first time states used a winner takes all method of selecting electors. A method that is still with us today, and probably not something the original writers of the Constitution imagined would happen.

Today, the United States is one of the few presidential republics that don't allow direct election of their president. Historically, electoral colleges were used to keep the powers in power. It was the way Indonesia used to keep Suharto in power and it is currently used in Hong Kong to keep democracy advocates at bay. It's a great way to make sure that you can remain in power when you don't have popular support.

The Electoral College in the U.S. lost its initial purpose with the election of Andrew Jackson which started a period of universal suffrage when property and

believe me, if you don't like the present situation, remember, it gets worse as you go up the chain of replacements. You've got a person who can strategically do the least harm atm, let's keep it that way..

In 1972, Tonie Nathan [wikipedia.org] became the first woman to receive an Electoral College vote (for Vice President).

She was the 1972 Libertarian VP candidate, on the ticket with John Hospers. Roger MacBride, a "faithless" Republican elector from Virginia, refused to vote for Richard Nixon, and cast the vote for Hospers and Nathan.

Scientists who analyzed the mucus from the tissue President-Elect Obama used during the sneeze have determined that Obama is suffering from a rare strain of an interspecies-infecting influenza virus. The fate of the human race remains undetermined.

If you seriously think that discussing how the electoral college works makes someone a democratic party hack, you are the single most butthurt partisan I've ever seen. So what, for the next 4-8 years, every time someone mentions anything having to do with the office of the president, they're a Democratic party hack? Waaaaaaa!!!!!!

Personally, I suspect pudge is behind this one, since he wrote a rant [slashdot.org] last night about how nobody at all covered this, and how the news companies that did screwed up by calling it "official".

Suddenly, slashdot has an article about the "unofficial" electoral college results. What a coincidence?

Metal is stronger than ice, since we make boats out of metal instead of ice. At room temperature, ice will melt faster than metal. And yet, the Titanic sank because of a supposedly iceberg. And no word on this from the government... Also, if you take the word "TITANIC" and you remove the letters T, I, and T, and then you add the letters C, O, S, P, R, and Y, then it spells conspiracy. Coincidence???

Theory conspiracist will always be the same... And "what a coincidence?" doesn't make much sense. Are you asking a question or not?

5 years as the 5th most powerful politician in the state of Texas (Texas constitution gives little power to the state governor). Prior to that, his resume consisted of drinking, skipping out on his Air Guard commitments, and driving companies into the ground in positions he was given by friends of his father. Every accomplishment in Bush's life has come from his last name. If he were George W. Smith, right now he'd be taking orders from

The article is crap, but you got the reasons reversed. It definitely matters, but it's not news. The leader of one of the largest and most influential countries in the world is being replaced, and that matters. If something strange had happened it would be news, as it is we're just seeing the electoral system do the same thing it always does.

By the end of the day, you'll see hundreds of posts to this thread. Many rants about Bush. Comments about the evangelical Christians and their agenda. Comments about bailouts. Etc...

This will draw many many eyeballs to advertisements and clicks. The end of the quarter is coming up and they need try to make the numbers. Even then, I'm sure there's going to be layoffs at Slashdot next year, too. Then, we'll really see the dupes!

This is news for nerds because the difference between the way things are expected to work and the way they are actually implemented is a nerd interest.

The fact that this something that happens regularly every four years doesn't mean it isn't news. If that were the case, then we would not see stories with titles like "The worst/best/most/least ____ of 2008" in the upcoming weeks.

I remember during the 2000 election fiasco, I was watching some news call in show. A woman said that Gore had an unfair advantage, because he was a career politician and probably knew about this electoral college stuff, while she was sure Bush didn't. She apparently had never heard of it.

It doesn't hurt to remind people of the bizarre way that the US Presidential election works.

Many people, who have not carefully pondered the elctoral college system consider it an anachronism.

And it's true some of it's purposes, such as not requiringing candidates to make the perilous journey to all the states and to prevent religious institutions from swaying direct democratic vote have lost their original purposes. And indeed those aspects are gone. The electors are bound democraticly not by the legislative branch as was the norm.

But it's remaining features are of great interest to nerds. It's a very clever optimization problem with a very clever robust solution.

Some people think that the president should be chosen by a popular vote. But instead the design of the college is intended to optimize a different criteria. It's purpose is to choose the person who is best able to govern and is the most broadly representative, not the most popular.

here's the three central challenges it is addressing.

1) Whenever two candidates are sufficiently close in the popular vote as to both be highly popular, the best choice is not the one that eeks out a few extra votes, but rather the one that gathers the votes from the most geographically diverse base. The states form an excellent proxy for diversity.

2) the president is the man who must follow the will of the legislative branch. Like it or not we have a union formed around a senate which has a large small state bias. If you dislike the small state bias, then you should complain about the senate not the electoral college. The president has to work with the senate after he's elected so it makes a lot of sense to give the presidentially election a minor small state bias.

this 2=extra elector bias is quite small but insures that desiderata 1 and 2 are carried out.

3) the third function of the EC system is population normalization. The president is president of all the people, not just the ones that voted or even the ones that voted for for him. He's even the president of the ones that can't vote. (felons, children, women, and slaves all counted towards the population count since the begining). Thus no matter how many people cast votes, the total effect of tose votes is viewed as a sampling of the TOTAL population of the state. So the vote's effect is renormalized to the total state population by the EC system. Even if one person voted in CA, they get 45 electors.

As an example, in the last election, the turnout in Alaska was quite small for whatever reason. but they still get the full electoral count.

The real problem with the EC system is not that it does not perfectly track the popular vote--it's not trying to be an approximation of that criteria. It's really trying to bias the choice to someone who is both popular and diversely popular.

the real reason the EC system has some difficulties is the silly winner-take-all process.

instead of eliminating it here's a suggestion. remove the winner take-all division of electors. instead, take the top-two vote-getters and approtion the electors between them in each state according to the state's popular votes. Award a 2-elector bonus to the overall vote-getter.

this preserves the renormalization, the small state bias, and the diversity bonus. But it removes all the problems.

in case it's not known. the number of electors per state is proportional to the states population, plus 2. (techincally it's equal to the number of congressmen and senators)

One of it's qualities is also to provide a mechanism for reliable elections in the event of disruptions. Death of the candidate or wartime issues were more of a problem a long time ago and this provides the existence of a deliberative body separate from congress itself to consider what to do when the unexpected happens. (Ultimately the legislative branch selects the president in the event all else fails. and this has happened several times.)

Even though the electors are nominally "bound" to vote for the person they were chosen to represent, the intent to give them some deliberative power is clear. Originally they were given two votes. The expectation was they would cast the first vote for locally selected favorite. But they could freely choose some person of greater national interest with the second vote.

Indeed in one election, martin van buren's I believe. The opposing party actually ran three candidates for president, each one a regional favorite in different parts of the country. The plan was that the electors's would down-select to just one of the three in their second vote.

the strategy was never tested as the opposing party had more than 50% of the electors.

But the point is, the electoral system is not supposed to be simply a popular vote. it's supposed to choose the person who is, while very popular, the one who is most representative of a diverse electorate, representing all the states, and with a weight proportional to the state's representation in congress, not simply the number of eligible and able voters.

You make it sound awfully high-minded and artfully constructed. It looks to me more like a crude political compromise to get Rhode Island, Delaware and Georgia to sign on to this Constitution thing without feeling like Virginia and New York were going to completely trample them. It's tempting to see everything the founding fathers did as wonderfully wise and perfect. But while they were quite amazingly far-sighted, they were also politicians cutting deals to get things done within the partisan realities of the day.

Since roughly the election of Andrew Jackson, quite a few people have felt that the President ought to be a direct representative of the People, which would argue for a popular vote.

But even if you think of the President as a representative of state legislatures, as the founders might, the electoral college is lame. The modern effect is to give citizens of smaller states a disproportionate say in selecting the President. While this is hailed as protecting the rights of smaller states, if that's the goal it's ridiculously inadequate. The demographics of state populations today just aren't comparable to when the Constitution was adopted. It's hard to imagine a polarizing big-state-vs-little state issue today, but if there was one and it drove a presidential election, the big states would roll over the little ones without difficulty. 51% of the votes in the biggest eleven states wins all by itself.

The modern effect of the Electoral college is that only battlegound states matter. Nobody campaigns in California, nor in Wyoming; it's all about Ohio and Florida. It doesn't ensure popularity in a wide area; it ensures that the concerns of most voters are irrelevant. In the last election, there was no point in either candidate courting voters in either the biggest or smallest state, because everyone knew how their votes were going to go, and everywhere but Nebraska and Maine is winner-take all.

It doesn't ensure the President is "representative of a diverse electorate" - it encourages the opposite; a President who can appeal to a few very narrow key demographics to push them over the top in a handful of states.

You make it sound awfully high-minded and artfully constructed. It looks to me more like a crude political compromise to get Rhode Island, Delaware and Georgia to sign on to this Constitution thing without feeling like Virginia and New York were going to completely trample them.

That's the mostly revisionist version of the nature of the compromise. It wasn't strictly speaking an issue of small population states vs big states. It was an issue of slave states vs non-slave states. Yes, the southern states tended to have lower populations than the northern states, certainly in aggregate, and they were worried about being trampled by the populous states like New York due to the population difference. But the line was slave vs non-slave*.

That's not the only compromise in the Constitution regarding slavery. More obvious than the electoral college is the compromise that only three fifths of slaves would count for purposes of determining representatives and taxes. The slave states, having such large populations of slaves, wanted them to count fully (even though those people could not vote and were clearly not represented by the Representatives of their states), while the free states wanted them not to count at all. Also Congress was also prohibited by the Constitution from passing laws prohibiting the importation of slaves until the year 1808, and practically this meant there could be no debate over the issue in Congress until that time.

These compromised postponed the issue and allowed the United States to be formed and to survive, but didn't erase the issue which ultimately culminated in the Civil War. Whether these were good or bad compromises isn't really the issue, here. My point is that these really are nothing more than a political compromise for an issue that doesn't even exist anymore. A compromise that no longer works, for anything.

Your observations on the practical realities of the college vis-a-vis the ret-conned "rural vs urban" states purpose are correct. In addition, the college actually does much more harm than good in granting power to the rural areas. Sure Wyoming has slightly more influence than they might without an extra two electors. On the other hand, rural California, rural New York, even rural Illinois are all more populous than Wyoming yet still almost completely irrelevant. Their votes aren't just drowned out by more populous areas, their votes don't matter at all, their portion of the electors actually goes towards whoever the metropolitan centers in their states votes towards, even if it's a different candidate. How can we argue in favor of a system on the basis of giving the under-represented a greater voice, when the reality is it completely takes away representation from many, many more?

It's a broken system, it was a passable political compromise in the day it was created, it serves no function any more. We need an Amendment.

* That's really a misnomer, since all of the states had slaves in them at the time of the Constitutional Convention, but the trend was apparent.

Boycott, not blockade. i.e. the other states stopped trading with them, but didn't do anything to prevent them trading with other countries. Fairly serious economic sanctions in any case, but not military force. The Constitution had been enacted with 4 states as holdouts, but the other 3 ratified it before it actually took effect. The agrarian party in Rhode Island wanted a liberal monetary policy to benefit farmers, and was concerned that with a stronger federal government, the other states would

> the president is the man who must follow the will of the legislative branch

Do you really think the founding fathers thought that the at present 535 members of congress should be 'leading'? No, I'm not attacking at the present political makeup congress (which is always so easy) but the simply the number of members... heck, go back to the first congress where at the end there were 26 Senators and 64 Representatives... and even in a group of 90 people.

The structure of a government body or an electoral process is a technology. These are artifacts that are designed to meet certain requirements. There are rich fields of mathematics describing what it and is not possible, and various designs (such as proportional representation or approval voting) which represent different tradeoffs between incompatible ends.

The electoral college is a case in point. The original idea was to moderate public passions by filtering them through elected representatives from each state. However once you do that, you are presented with a problem: under such a system, residents of less populous states would, in effect, have no say in an election that was entirely determined by a few large states. So they tweaked the weight of each state's vote to provide what, at the time, amounted to an equalization of power between residents of different states (as well as ensuring that no drastic measures were taken at the Federal level which would damage economies dependent on slave importation).

Of course, this leads to the "old lady who swallowed the fly" scenario: while ensuring equalization of influence between states of different sizes, it creates severe imbalances of influence between safe states and battleground states.

And that's a hallmark of an engineering problem: you can't have everything because fixes in one place create problems in other places.

Ron Paul FTW! All kidding aside, it doesn't matter if Obama's mother was a British citizen or McCain was born in Panama. You're a natural born citizen if A) you're born on U.S. soil (Obama was born in Hawaii), or if you're born to an American citizen (McCain's parents were both US Citizens), so it was a moot point.

A conspiracy like this more likely with McCain then with Obama.Obama wasn't born and the parents went well he may be president so lets spend thousands of dollars (for a middle class family in the 60's) to make sure he is officially born in the US.Vs.Being born in an other country in a family of 2 Generations of Navy Admirals. Who would expect greatness from their son. And have the resources to get papers changed.

1) Technically all the questions to those in Kenya about Barrack Obama, have neglected to specify Jr or Sr. Since him and his father share an identical name, its impossible to know which one they are talking about.

2) Minors can not give up their citizenship. And parents can't give up their minor's citizenship.

The United States doesn't acknowledge renouncing your citizenship when you go through a foreign nations naturalization process that has renunciation as part of its oath. USA's naturalization oath also calls for giving up any other citizenship... but other countries ignore it just like we ignore theirs. The only way to lose your USA citizenship is to go to an embassy and formally renounce it or commit treason.

While you can technically have multiple citizenships. When your in USA controlled territory th

Not that it matters much, but this canard about only Indonesian citizens enrolling in schools in Indonesia is complete crap and is further evidence of just how morally bankrupt the entire "controversy" is.

I not only happen to live right across the straits from Indonesia [1], I also keep going there for short-trips, one as recently as two weeks back. Many of my colleagues, including my immediate boss, are Indonesian, as are many friends; many more grew up as ex-pats in Jakarta, in ways similar to Obama did in the 60's. Take it from me; you dont need to be Indonesian to attend a school there. It is a piece of absolute and complete rubbish that should insult anybody's intelligence.

On further googling: Perhaps you meant to talk about this piece of excrement [daylife.com], the true extent of whose stench is only apparent when you realize that Obama attended a public school [ucla.edu] that's colloquially called as SDN Besuki [wikipedia.org], and not a Catholic school named after St Francis of Assisi in Bahasa Indonesia [wikipedia.org] (that's Indonesia's national language [wikipedia.org], in case you were wondering).

[1] - I mean that in a reality-based, non-Palin-isque sense; yes, Indonesia is just across the Straits of Malacca, some 45 min away by boat. I can, indeed, see Indonesia on a clear day and sometimes receive Indonesian mobile network while I'm in my own room.

When questions about his birth appeared, he published a scanned copy of his Certificate of Live Birth on his website. FactCheck.org [factcheck.org] and PolitiFact.com [politifact.com] both show copies of it.

That Certificate of Live Birth isn't the same as a birth certificate.

For purposes of proving birth, it is accepted by all other states and the federal government as proof. You can use it to get a passport.

It looks like a fraud done by a computer, for example it doesn't list the hospital, there's no doctor name, the form was revised in 2001, etc.

When requesting proof of birth, the State of Hawaii, like many other states, does not send someone down to the archives to photocopy old records. Instead, the State of Hawaii will look up the data, print out a certificate, put a seal on it, and put a stamped signature. The COLB is a short form copy that does not have all the details of the long form original like the hospital. Because some individuals are not born in a hospital, the short form copy lists only those fields which are relevant to all births like "Place of Birth".

But this makes Obama a liar because this isn't his original birth certificate that's because he doesn't have one.

To be clear, Obama's team has never claimed that the COLB was his original birth certificate only that it was an official copy of his birth certificate. As for possessing an original birth certificate, many people do not have theirs. They may have been lost over the years. For most people, when you request a copy from your state, most likely the state will print out a copy as Hawaii as done here.

But there was no seal or signature on the so-called "copy" I saw on the website.

Most government signatures for documents like this are not hand signatures; they are stamped signatures.

Still, it doesn't look like any other birth certificate I've seen.

The look of birth certificates varies from state to state and in some cases, county to county. The COLB presented by Obama is the same form as any other COLB from Hawaii.

But the COLB only records that someone was born somewhere. It doesn't actually prove he was born in Hawaii.

The COLB lists the Place of Birth. In Obama's case, it lists "Honolulu".

But you can get a COLB for people born outside Hawaii and the US even.

Starting in 1982, the State of Hawaii allowed parents to register their children who were born elsewhere as an secondary means of proof just like a passport proves citizenship in lieu of a Certificate of Naturalization or a birth certificate. However, the COLB would not deviate the Place of Birth from the original birth certificate. If a child was not born in Hawaii, the COLB would list their Place of Birth as some place other than "Hawaii". This registration was not an option for Obama's mother as he was born in 1961.

Why is the certificate number blacked out? This means it was altered.

Obama's campaign says blacking out the numbers was a cautionary move just in case the number was security sensitive just like you would not post a SSN online. As it turns out, it was not. FactCheck shows the number.

FactCheck's photos have the datestamp of March 2008 even though their article claims to have seen it around October 2008. This proves a fake.

The head of the Hawaii Department of Health confirmed on October 31 that Obama was born in Honolulu, saying that she has "personally seen and verified that the Hawaii State Department of Health has Sen. Obama's original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures."

In addition, just a few days ago the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case brought against Obama regarding his citizenship.

A child cannot give up his US citizenship by living abroad or renouncing it. His/her parents cannot renounce it either. A US citizen can renounce his citizenship an adult or by other means (but as an adult) Loss of Citizenship (INA 349) [americanlaw.com]covers this.

Incorrect. Barack Hussein Obama was, indeed, born in Hawaii 2 years after Hawaii achieved statehood. Read all about it on Snopes. [google.com] Say what you will, but Barb and Dave are usually pretty good about scoping out all the facts.

I can. Read some of their articles on a subject where you know a bit. It can be painful. My main complaint is that they present themselves as authoritative, as though they've done all the research so that you don't have to. At least Wikipedia is honest about its incompleteness.

Actually, that's probably the best way to do it, is have the electoral college be proportional to within its own state. I've never been a fan of the straight popular vote for President - it really takes away from the rural states and some of their voice in government, and places without major population center needs to have its voice heard. Yeah, it may mean their vote "counts more," but direct democracy, particularly when dealing with such a large population who is getting more and more uneducated about politics, and who is apt to fall for some of the semi-demogoguery from both sides (Obama's campaign to the masses was woefully short on substance, and about all anyone on the street was able to say was "change.")

Frankly, what I would like to see, and what has even LESS chance to get set in than getting rid of the electoral college, is a test that must be taken when one votes that has basic principles of civics.

Frankly, what I would like to see, and what has even LESS chance to get set in than getting rid of the electoral college, is a test that must be taken when one votes that has basic principles of civics.

"Frankly, what I would like to see, and what has even LESS chance to get set in than getting rid of the electoral college, is a test that must be taken when one votes that has basic principles of civics."

Yeah, how could that ever [wikipedia.org] go [wikipedia.org] wrong [wikipedia.org]. It's illegal [wikipedia.org] for good reasons, but then again, you might prefer systematic racism if it puts your candidate into the white house.

Of course, this isn't really a race issue, it's a "my candidate didn't win, so the rules have to be changed so that he's guaranteed to win nex

I like what you're getting at, I really do, but the big problem with it is that it's been (almost) doen like that before, with horrid results.

Here's the thing; whenever you posit a change of laws, how the law will have positive effects should be your SECONDARY (not primary) point of interest. Your PRIMARY point of interest needs to be "how could this law be abused", and under THAT standard, your testing turns out to be a REALLY BAD idea. It's not that the principle isn't sound, it's that the possible (lik

You take the first step, and then maybe I'll give up my gun in an urban environment. Post a sign on your apartment window that says "I believe in gun control. There are no firearms in this residence." The availability of firearms is a general, not specific deterrent. However if you let folks know of your views of how the world should be, then perhaps we can see how well it works out for you.

Good luck.

p.s. You might also help your cause by learning when to use capital letters. It really helps the reader det

Are you paying attention to what has happened in "gun-free zones" and in cities with more restrictions on gun control in the US? Crime is higher than in cities and areas with gun control, as a general rule.

You also further restrict the freedom of the law-abiding, and put them at the mercy of criminals. A majority - a VAST majority, of gun owners in the USA are NOT criminals and will likely never commit a crime. Why take away their right to own a gun? What harm will it bring to you?

Chicago. Detroit. DC. Poorer cities with high crime rates. New York is a relatively wealthy city - you're distancing the historical root of crime - poverty - and blaming it on inanimate objects and better police protection, which New York can afford. You want to restrict the freedom of the law-abiding needlessly, even within cities.

Conceal-carry states are relatively poorer than their neighbors and have relatively lower crime rates than states with more restrictive gun rights. You don't pay attention to what works and what doesn't in gun control. You ignore the matter that gun owners - particularly those with conceal-carry permits - don't commit crimes and want to punish them for something they aren't doing.

The case of New York is particularly interesting because premeditated policy decisions may have exported crime to surrounding areas:

In some places, the phenomenon is hard to detect, but there may be a simple reason: in cities with tight housing markets, Section 8 recipients generally can't afford to live within the city limits, and sometimes they even move to different states. New York, where the rate of violent crime has plummeted, appears to have pushed many of its poor out to New Jersey, where violent c

again, let me get this absolutely clear to you: for the sake of the current (flawed) interpretation of the second amendment, there are needless deaths every day in urban settings. right now, for the disproportionate influence of rural people, urban people die.

The Urban tendency is to blame objects for acts degenerates commit. This avoids any uncomfortable questions about the sick culture in the most violent American cities.Further, your entire post is pretty much negated by the facts- that crime, and armed

(1) That's because they recalled that a previous Democracy in Athens had killed one of mankind's greatest thinkers, Socrates, simply because they didn't like him. They did not want the right to life to be taken-away by a simple 50% +1 vote.

(2) It's no more fucked-up then how the European Union operates - ya know, a Union of States where States elect ministers to the Council, not the people. You need to understand history, because in 1786 we were not a single nation - we were 13 indepentent nations coming together as an EU-type organization. Hence an election organized by States, not people.

(3) Hence we a Republic of 50 States, where LAW reigns and protects the individual, not a democracy where the majority squashes the individual underfoot.

(1) That's because they recalled that a previous Democracy in Athens had killed one of mankind's greatest thinkers, Socrates, simply because they didn't like him.

That's a tad oversimplifying things. Plato stood strongly against democracy, and (although we don't know) it's not unreasonable to suggest that Socrates did too. Plato's Socrates may have been killed because "they didn`t like him", but the real Socrates? He may very well of been the man that brought tyranny to the city.

By what definition should Al Gore have "rightfully" been President after the 2000 election? If the U.S. Supreme Court had not stepped in, the Florida legislature would have appointed electors to represent Florida that would have voted for George W. Bush. If those electors were not seated, the election would have gone to Congress to be decided. Congress would have chosen George W. Bush.
As for the "popular vote", California alone chose not to count more absentee ballots than the difference in the reported national vote totals between George W. Bush and Al Gore. The reason that California (and many other states) did not count all of the absentee ballots was because for California, the remaining absentee ballots were fewer than the difference in the vote total for California.

the official record is al gore won the popular vote. please, show us contingencies and if-then conditions where this is not true. it doesn't mean anything

There is no official record of the popular vote, as the popular vote didn't mean anything and thus wasn't officially counted. Your suppositions of what the popular vote might have been (had it been counted) don't mean anything.

the official record is al gore won the popular vote. please, show us contingencies and if-then conditions where this is not true. it doesn't mean anything

The popular vote doesn't matter. The president is not elected by the people. He's elected by the states, through their electors. By the rules of our political game, deciding the president by the popular vote makes as much sense as deciding a football game by most offensive yards gained.

If you want to change the rules, start with your state. Your state decides who will represent it in the electoral college, and can pick them however it wants. After enough states have switched to a proportional system, you're

The "will of the people" was split pretty much 50-50, well within the margin of error for anything as large as a national election. Would the appointment of "the other guy instead" have any better reflected that will?

You do realise that the main reasons for adopting an electoral college system were practical?
Specifically, that communicating the results, let alone running a single co-ordinated election, took a very long time (with only horses), and that the union was newly formed so the states still didn't trust each other or the federal goverment?

I have co-workers that didn't know there were other candidates for president besides McCain and Obama...

That has far more to do with a corrupt and dishonest media than it does with democracy or our electoral system (or even the two parties). If the media actually covered the other candidates, or allowed them to participate in the media moderated and sponsored debates, people would know about them.

Funny how we're supposed to be fighting regimes that block citizens of other countries from having a democracy but we don't have anything more than a sham here...

Actually, we don't have a true democracy here (thank goodness). We have a federal republic with checks and balances. And that's very fortunate, because democracy in its pure form is simply mob rule. We have some checks on the majority to keep it from just running rampant over minorities, which does technically break with pure democracy but is a very good idea. Ultimately, of course, at the end of the day super-majorities do have the ultimate say, because that's better than a king, but fortunately we do not have a pure democracy.

Now, if you are trying to claim that the will of the people is not properly represented within the system we currently have, I call bull and demand that you provide some evidence. Yes, our government is pretty terrible at the moment (and I think will be even worse when the new congress and administration come in), but it isn't because the government isn't reflecting us. Rather, it is because the government reflects us that it is so terrible. We as a society are becoming a bunch of lazy, uneducated, entitlement people who think we have a right to everything without actually working hard at learning and producing. We, as a society, don't bother to learn anything about economics, government (especially how ours is supposed to work), foreign affairs or anything else. Then we go to the polls and vote based on our ignorance (usually for whoever "looks presidential" or "will fix our lives" or "promised us X").

No, the sad fact is, our government is a VERY good reflection of what we are becoming as a society and a nation. Does congress look like a whiny, clueless island of misfit toys? Yes, but so do we.

Why not? That's what I'd do, if I wanted to get anything done. The last president to fill most of his staff with Washington outsiders was Jimmy Carter; while he is underrated as a President, this decision cost him a lot of effectiveness. The last major initiative headed by a Washington outsider was the Clinton's health plan. Not knowing how national politics worked wasn't exactly an asset.

Ronald Reagan was, in terms of getting his policy initiatives acted upon, one of the most successful presidents in modern history. His administration was staffed largely by Nixon admiinstration veterans, former congressmen, and scions of old political families. The few outsiders in his administration were either at departments he wanted to fail (Education). The only exception was Attorney General, a position he preferred to fill with old, loyal California cronies.

One thing about this whole Obama citizenship debate that bothers me - how the *hell* do we even wind up in a situation where, *after* the election, someone is questioning eligibility? In order to run for President, you have to register your candidacy with the Federal Election Commission, or something, don' you? Why aren't candidates required to prove eligibility as a requirement to even *be in the election*?

We should not have a system where it's even remotely possible that someone could be elected when they aren't eligible.

That said, there really is no question that Obama is a natural citizen. After all, we know who his mother and grandmother are, and we know they are natural born citizens. By definition, if either of your parents are US citizens, you are a natural born citizen. Unless you don't think the woman he claims as his mother really is his mother.